Linzertorte

Linzertorte

I am so pleased that people liked the Linzertorte. I generally avoid cooking/baking because I don't particularly enjoy it, and I honestly think that no-one has EVER asked me for a recipe before.......

This was the cake I requested for every birthday when I was a kid. This recipe comes straight out of a Swiss cookbook that my Swiss mom toted over from the Old Country back in the sixties. Everything is thus measured out in grams, as European people generally bake using a small kitchen scale to measure out ingredients rather than using cup measures. Thus, without a kitchen scale, this recipe might be useless, but here goes:

Directions are for a cake baked in a 15-1/2" by 10-1/2" cookie sheet with 3/4" high sides.

Crust

• 300 grams flour
• 1 slightly heaping tsp baking powder (4-1/2 grams if your scale is that good, mine isn't)
• 180 grams sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract plus a few more drops
• 3 drops of Dr. Oelker Bittermandel essence -- it might be possible to get this at a German deli (my mom left me some from her last trip to Switzerland) but if you can't get it, either leave it out or substitute some almond extract.
• Pinch of cloves (the recipe actually says a "knife tip full" -- I generously dip the tip of a butter knife in the cloves)
• 1-1/2 level tsp of cinnamon
• 1-1/2 egg whites and 1 egg yolk (separate them, obviously)
• 180 grams butter at room temperature
• 180 grams finely ground up almonds

Put flour and baking powder in bowl and mix. Make a hole in the flour with a spoon. Put the sugar, vanilla, cloves, cinnamon, egg whites and half of the egg yolk in the hole (save the other half of the egg yolk to stroke onto the crust with a pastry brush later). Mix with a fork into a dough using approximately half the flour. Cut the soft butter into small pieces and put on top of the dough. Put in the almonds. Knead the dough together with your hands. Don't knead too long or the dough will become tough....just enough so that the whole thing holds together and the butter pieces are well mixed in. If the dough is too soft at this point, refrigerate it for awhile.

Take barely one-half of the dough and pat and press it into the bottom of the pan with your hands to cover to the edges. Now spread most of the contents of a largish jar of raspberry jam on the dough, keeping the jam about one inch away from all the edges. Don't be stingy with the jam! If you don't like raspberry, this cake tastes great with any jam variety.

Reserve a handful of the dough for the decoration.

Take the remainder of the dough and roll it into a long roll. Put the roll against all four edges of the pan and press it in to form the outer crust. Take a fork and use the tines to press a decorative edge onto the crust.

Roll out the last handful of dough with a rolling pin until it is fairly thin. Cut out shapes with your favorite cookie cutter and place the cut-outs on top of the raspberry jam.

Using a pastry brush, brush the crust and the cut-outs with the left-over egg yolk at least twice. Get another egg yolk if you run out.

Bake at 350° F for 25-30 minutes. Let completely cool.

This cake tastes even better the next day and keeps wonderfully for days.

Let me know if you make it, how it turned out.

Claudia LB
(5/28/01)